The creatures are known under a variety of names.

Throughout the Himalayas they are known to the Sherpa people as "Yeti" ("dweller among the rocks"). In China, the "Chi-Chi" or "Chang Mi" (wild man"); and in Canada and the United States, "Sasquatch", (hairy man of the forest", better know as "Bigfoot"). Other hairy man-apes are said to inhabit the jungles of South-east Asia and New Guinea.

Further south still, in south-eastern Australia, the Aborigines preserve traditions of the "Yowie" (also known as "Doolagahl", meaning "great hairy man"). The yowies, like their overseas cousins, are described as often enormous, hairy, manlike or ape-like creatures of tremendous weight and strength.

Their physical description, as given by the Aborigines to early European settlers in the 1800's, also matches descriptions given by modern-day eyewitnesses, and I believe this will be significant in the eventual scientific classification of these creatures.

According to Aborigines, the yowies were terrifying to look upon: fearsome and hairy, up to or over 2.6 metres in height, with strong muscular bodies, powerful arms and large hands longer than a human's. They walked upright upon two legs with a stooped gait. Their heads were sunk into their shoulders, giving them the stooped appearance.They had a pointed sagittal crest (skull dome) and a receding forehead with thick, protruding eyebrow-ridges and large deeply-set eyes.

Males were often hairier than females, who had long pendulous breasts. The feet of the yowie were much larger than those of a normal-sized human, and possessed an opposable big toe. These mysterious hominids roamed the remoter, forest-covered mountain regions either in small family groups or or hunting in ones and twos, their females and young secreted back in their lairs.

The Aborigines both feared and respected the yowies, venerating them as sacred creatures from the Dreamtime. In fact, as already pointed out, Aboriginal folklore is still full of giant manlike beings, creatures sometimes over three metres in height. While some were giant humans who made massive stone tools and sometimes fire, others were more ape-like.

From Western Australia and the Northern Territory I have obtained traditions of a gigantic gorilla-like monster that once terrorised Aboriginal tribes of the interior. From the vast amount of evidence I have gathered, it is obvious to me that the yowie, or Doolagahl, like its central Australian gorilla-monster relatives, was no mere Aboriginal 'bunyip' but a flesh-and-blood creature.

What is the Yowie (Great Hairy Man)...

Before advancing to just some of the massive store of case-history evidence I have gathered in over 30 years of hunting yowies and other Australian 'monsters' across the continent, it is first necessary too examine the following facts.

The pointed sagittal crest is a primate rather than modern human feature, while the receding forehead and thick, protruding eyebrow-ridges are features of primitive 'ape man' skulls of Java Man and Australopithecus who inhabited Asia half a million to two million years ago during the last ice age.

In both China and Java, since the 1930's anthropologists have been excavating massive fossil jaws and teeth of a giant, upright-walking, manlike ape called Gigantopithecus ("South China Giant"), believed to have stood at least five metres in height. Giant-sized fossil footprints found in Asia are thought by some to be the tracks of Gigantopithecus.

In Australia, similar giant fossil tracks have been found which closely resemble the freshly made tracks of Yowie,/Yeti/Bigfoot creatures in modern times.

Gigantopithecus is at present regarded by many 'relict hominid' researchers {such as myself} as the ancestor of the later, smaller Yowie,/Yeti/Bigfoot. While most 'respectable' scientists dismiss the surviving 'relict hominid' theory out of hand, there are a number of other researchers worldwide that think otherwise. Of these, eminent American anthropologist Dr Grover T. Krantz of Washington State University is best known.

From exhaustive studies and comparisons of what he considers to be authentic Bigfoot footprint plaster-casts, Krantz has concluded that the creature may indeed be living representatives of Gigantopithecus. Despite worldwide scientific opinion that Gigantopithecus would have walked on its knuckles like a gorilla rather than on its feet.

Dr Krantz makes a convincing argument based the spread of the lower jaw, that Gigantopithecus was actually an erect biped.

Using the massive fossil jaws of these monster man-apes as a guide he says; "If you change a gorilla to a vertical posture like a human, and make the neck come straight down, one thing you have to do is spread the back of the lower jaw to make room for the neck. And, as can be shown, the lower jaw of Gigantopithecus spreads much more widely than the jaw of a gorilla. Gigantopithecus was so much like the Sasquatch that I would assume Gigantopithecus is still alive today".

During the last great ice age, sea levels were much lower than they are today, and land-bridges joined Australia and the Americas to the Asian mainland. It was over these 'bridges' that the ancestors of the Yowie/Yeti/Bigfoot/ would have migrated.

Our early European settlers took the existence of the Yowie/Doolagahl for granted, regarding them as some secretive race that inhabited the still largely unexplored interior of the continent, and the eastern Australian mountain ranges in particular. In fact, sightings of 'hairy men' by Europeans date back to the first years of settlement.

I find these 'historic' yowie reports fascinating, for they lend the mystery some degree of credibility. It is a belief in this credibility that has engaged me over the past 36 years to undertake countless field expeditions often in some of the most inhospitable mountain country, in search of evidence of these creatures 'existence'.

My first meeting with the Yowie took place in 1957 when, as a 14 year old student at Liverpool Boy's High School in Sydney's west, I came across in the school library aboriginal myths and legends books containing numerous tales of these hairy men.

I immediately became fascinated with the creatures and began collecting all the myths and legends I could about them. In 1958 when my family moved to Katoomba in the rugged Blue Mountains, not only did I soon find out that the Yowies were a part of local folklore, but that people had claimed to have seen the creatures from the early 1800's into recent years.

Above & below are just glimpses of what you will encounter inside
"The Australian Yowie Research Centre"

Yowies / Aboriginals
  Aboriginal Carvings - Aboriginal Art & Carvings of the Great Hairy man (the Yowie)
  Aboriginal Legends - Aboriginal Legends of the Great Hairy man (the Yowie)
  Aboriginal Stories - Aboriginal Stories of the Great Hairy man (the Yowie)
  Aboriginal Sounds - Aboriginal Sounds of the Great Hairy man (the Yowie)
  Aboriginal Namess - Aboriginal Names for the Great Hairy man (the Yowie)

Yowies / Early Reports
  1700-1799 - Early Settler's Reports of the Great Hairy man (the Yowie)
  1800-1899 - Early Settler's Reports of the Great Hairy man (the Yowie)

Yowies / Modern Reports
  1900-1999 - The Modern Reports of the Great Hairy man (the Yowie)
  2000-2099 - The Latest Reports of the Great Hairy man (the Yowie)

Yowie Books
  Giants From the Dreamtime - The Yowie in Myth and Reality Excerpts (Yowie Book Avalable Now order Below)
  Order Your Copy Here - Giants from the Dreamtime-The Yowie in Myth and Reality 2001

Yowie Articles
  Newspaper and Magazine Articles - Articles I have Written on The Yowie over the Years.

Yowies / Evidence
  Plaster Casts - Yowie Plaster Casts-Casts of the Australian Yowie
  Colours & Sizes - Yowie Descriptions-Colours and Sizes Observed
  Hair Samples - Yowie Hair Samples-What Evidence of Hair Samples?
  Fresh Tracks - Yowie Footprints-What to look For?
  Mineralised Skull - Yowie Mineralised Skull(s)?
  Modern Tools - Yowie Tools and Implements-Fresh Homo erectus Tools?
  Habitats - Yowie Habitats-Where does the Yowie Frequent?
  Food Source - Yowie Food Source-What does a Yowie Eat?
  Migratory Paths - Yowie Migratory Paths-Does the Yowie Migrate?
  The Call of the Yowie - Yowie Sounds-What does a Yowie Sound Like?

Pre Aboriginal Evidence
  Giant Fossilised Footprints - Pre Aboriginal Evolution in Australia
  Mineralised Skulls - Pre Aboriginal Evidence in Australia
  Order Your Cast Here - Buy any of the Many Fossilised Footprint and Yowie Footprint Casts